IRC Announces 2024 Emergency Watchlist
Each December, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) releases its annual Emergency Watchlist — an assessment of the 20 countries in which humanitarian crises are most likely to deteriorate in the coming year. The humanitarian organization formally unveiled its 2024 report at an event at SIPA’s Institute of Global Politics (IGP) on December 18.
In his opening remarks, IRC President and CEO David Miliband noted that 300 million people around the world are dependent on the humanitarian aid system to survive, a number that has quadrupled over the last decade due largely to conflict and climate change.
“The trend lines all in one direction is towards more crisis,” he said.
Sudan led the list due to the country’s ongoing civil war; the occupied Palestinian territory came in second, due to the recent Israel-Hamas conflict.
In addition to identifying the countries and regions most at risk, the report highlights facts that help illuminate the extreme levels of humanitarian crisis worldwide, addresses a series of myths about humanitarian aid, and outlines priorities for action — including investing in climate adaptation, tackling extreme poverty, and prioritizing gender equality in crisis response.
The trend lines all in one direction is towards more crisis.
— David Miliband
Miliband — who is also a Carnegie Distinguished Fellow at IGP — was joined by Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton for a discussion of the deepening global humanitarian crises found in the 2024 Emergency Watchlist, but also what is getting in the way of enacting effective policies to address and prevent these catastrophes.
Vladimir Duthiers, the Peabody and Emmy award-winning journalist at CBS News, led the conversation as moderator.
As part of their conversation, Miliband and Clinton decried the increasingly pernicious internationalization of civil conflict.
“You can just tally up the number of different countries that are sponsoring different sides of conflict,” said Miliband. “It's not unusual now to have five, 10, 15 rebel groups supported by five, 10, or even more external sponsors.”
“The use of proxies is a growing problem,” Clinton observed. “And it often means, then, that the funders of the proxies directly or indirectly have a stake in the propaganda about what is happening or not happening.”
Clinton and Miliband also discussed IRC’s continuing emphasis on addressing gender issues in its work to improve humanitarian conditions around the world.
“Thank you for prioritizing gender equality,” Clinton said. “It is not a luxury, it's not a side issue. It is central to whether or not our hopes for a lot of these countries could be realized.”
Watch the complete event: